Yes there is a lot of experimentation going on right now. Even the banks that I mentioned in the article would admit that they haven't totally answered all of the questions around gaining actionable insights from their data, and are still trying new things. I am curious though, what do you think is unique about the potential for MCX? I think it definitely has to be taken seriously because of its backing from the retailers. But I don't feel that I know enough about it yet to judge its potential.

Yes that's totally true, but there is also the potential for new technology to go around the limitations created by data silos. SAP has been pushing in-memory analytics with it HANA platform, which is one example of a solution that tries to circumnavigate those obstacles. But there are still data quality issues that have to be dealt with regardless.

Bankers and retailers are sharing data to advance value chains for consumers. So far most of these initiatives have been fragmented and have not hit the mark yet. MCX is one initiative that is interesting. But, a lot more needs to be done to gain a critical mass of acceptance. The land rush is on and lots of people are spending a lot of money. it is going to interesting to follow this complex ecosystem of smarter commerce.

You raise an important point around CRM. So many banks and brokerages adopted CRM even way back in the 1990s and post-2000s, so it's questionable as to why they are unable to access this data. Perhaps CRM data has been put into a silo that doesn't relate to hierarchy of reference data? Products like Salesforce are cloud-based. So would this be easier to integrate into a more holistic customer data analytics organization?

It's a bit surprising to me that so many banks still are so far behind in terms of the infrastructure needed to gain intelligence from customer data. It's not a new topic and one would think that the failures/frustrations around CRM implementation from 10 years ago might have taught some lessons about what needs to be in place to really be able to derive benefits from investments in analytics and other tools. Probably part of the problem has to do with the focus on cost cutting, compliance, risk management, etc. of the post-crisis era -- but shouldn't they be able to leverage some of those efforts? Another problem is that, while banks are still building the foundations for effective customer analytics, other industries will a) potentially swoop in and grab some of the potential customers, and b) the analytics/big data talent that banks need to optimize these capabilities will go elsewhere.

It seems like banks need to get their data management houses in order before they can move forward with analyzing customer data and use emerging technologies such as predictive analytics. If they need to first build the "hierarchies and taxonomies" to organize their data, this could take a few years before they are ready to build an architecture for data and customer analytics.

The statistic about the most common challenges to achieving customer-centricity being the sheer volume of data is a familiar one. It seems like effective data analytics tools are more in demand than ever before.